Great Barrier Island Part 2 (as told by C)

Tuesday morning was greeted with a lovely breakfast, during which I managed to shock several people in the dining room by having marmite and peanut butter on toast. Apparently marmite is an acceptable level of weird, but peanut butter takes the biscuit. We met on the lawn after breakfast and had a quick induction as to the plan for the day and bundled in the van kitted up and ready to go. S was eager to show me hebe (a type of flower) and we were looking out the left side of the van when suddenly we met the cliff. Someone else had been driving on our side of the road so George was forced to swerve. The worst part of it? The offender didn't even wave.

S, R, B, T, George and I said our goodbyes to the other groups and headed into the bush along the Perimeter fence. The fence was specifically set up to prevent rats from entering the sanctuary, but unfortunately rats have managed to re-enter (probably by swimming across the sea from ratted islands). For those of you who don't know, rats are a biodiversity nightmare in New Zealand and (next to humans) are almost single-handedly responsible for the major decline and slow recovery of (now) extremely rare birds. George has also proposed a theory that they are responsible for spreading fires which have a bad effect on plant life.

Great Barrier Island's vegetation is split roughly into four zones. After a fire, very scrubby fire-loving plants such as manuka (tea-tree) start to grow. Then a succession starts with kanuka (also tea-tree). Then fast-growing woody plants such as kauri start to take over, which then succumbs to shade-tolerant plants such as tawa and kohekohe. This is visible across the landscape where in the gullies lie the forest and on the ridges (the less fertile land) the manuka and kanuka. We were taking measurements to understand this landscape. We were also collecting data to see how effective the predator-proof fence actually was.

Over the course of the day, we took every other data point (so roughly every 100m) with B and T and collected data from about ten places. The first part of the day was spent climbing up the steep hill using the fence to hoist ourselves up. At one point we fought our way through cutting grass only to find on the other side the forest floor was so steep we wouldn't be able to collect anything! The second half of the day was easier, although we encountered some mean manuka and ended up covered in scratches. Due to the path we took, we ended up walking back to the campsite, took a swim off the jetty, had some tea, and hung about waiting for the others to return.

This gave me time to review the vast number of plants in my repertoire (at least fifteen) with the patient S. After dinner (plate of salad with a mound of tofu and berry smoothie for dessert), we played bananagrams before having the next lecture. We were also introduced to the work to be performed tomorrow: coring a peaty bog to count the charcoal to determine the arrival date of humans.